Does Gretchen Whitmer Hate Jocelyn Benson?

On its face, it doesn’t look like much of a dilemma, whether Gov. Gretchen Whitmer should endorse Jocelyn Benson or Mike Duggan in the governor’s race.

Benson is a living symbol of the 2018 pink wave, which Whitmer led.

With Whitmer months from retirement and Attorney General Dana Nessel with no next move in politics, Secretary of State Benson is the last of the “Charlie’s Angels” with a future.

Mike Duggan, on the other hand, took time to warm up to Whitmer. Early into the 2018 cycle, Duggan, then mayor of Detroit, sought out replacements for candidate Whitmer, thinking she didn’t have the stuff to win statewide.

Then, Duggan’s putsch made newsprint and embarrassed Hizzoner. Attempting to replace the front runner in the governor’s race is one thing. Failing in that attempt is another. Having it make the papers is quite another. Duggan hit the trifecta.

By February 2018, Duggan didn’t just backtrack, he pulled a 180 and endorsed Whitmer. Which is to say: By this point in 2018, Duggan had endorsed Whitmer.

One woman was Whitmer’s partner in a pink wave and a fellow Democrat. One man doubted Whitmer, then fled the Democrat Party as an electoral strategy.

The choice between the two seems easy. Yet Whitmer hasn’t given Jocelyn Benson the nod.

Polls say that Whitmer is somehow still popular in Michigan. Why hasn’t she used that popularity to boost her ally and punish the defector? Why hasn’t she been pressured to do so, for the good of the blue team?

Michigan history says that Democrats and Republicans trade the governor’s office every eight years. After eight years of Whitmer, history says 2026 will be a good year for the Republicans.

It’s better still that the Democrats are splitting the vote two ways, between Benson and Duggan. Benson will need all the help she can get. But the Whitmer cavalry has yet to arrive.

It’s been almost 60 years—since 1969—that a Michigan governor was succeeded by a member of their own party. And George Romney didn’t lose an election, he left Lansing to serve as HUD director under Nixon. This elevated Lt. Gov. Bill Milliken to the big chair, which he held through 1982.

It’s awkward, running to replace a governor of your own party. When things are not going well—and the damn roads, the damn schools, and the damn electric bills, say, are not going well in Michigan—candidates present themselves as the face of change.

Every time Benson rails against high energy costs, she’s blaming Whitmer. It’s the governor who appoints the energy regulators, and those regulators keep approving rate hikes for DTE and Consumers Energy.

And every time Duggan rails against Michigan’s bottom-10 schools, he’s blaming Whitmer. It’s the governor who locked schools down and denied the reading tutors who would’ve caught kids up, all for the sake of politics. It’s the governor who has yet to approve scholarship vouchers and tax breaks all at once, because teachers unions don’t like them.

Whoever gets the Whitmer endorsement will promptly turn around and tell voters that they’d do better than her. That’s bad enough. Worse would be getting the Whitmer endorsement and losing.

Who is the best guardian of the Gretchen Whitmer legacy? That’s what Whitmer has to decide right now. With every reason to choose Jocelyn Benson, Whitmer has remained silent.

And that silence speaks volumes.